Rules governing off-campus student housing and rooming houses across the province should be examined and considered for Ottawa, according to the councillor representing the Algonquin College area.

One system that should be looked at is rental licensing, College Ward Coun. Rick Chiarelli said Thursday.

In other Ontario municipalities, licensing requires that some properties pass an inspection and that landlords create plans for maintenance, including garbage pickup.

Chiarelli said he’s looking for ways for Ottawa enforcement officers to access and take action against absentee landlords and illegal rooming houses near campuses, where homes have been renovated to create more than the three or four rental r0oms that the city allows per house. Parking, noise and maintenance issues often follow, he said.

“Residents have invested in their homes and neighbourhoods and nobody should be allowed to break the law and destroy the character of the neighbourhood,” Chiarelli said in a statement, adding that he doesn’t want the area near the college to “become another Sandy Hill,” with high numbers of bylaw and property standards complaints.

This year the city closed loopholes in conversion regulations so renovations to existing residences are scrutinized the same way new developments are.

But that isn’t enough for Chiarelli. He put forward a notice of motion to Thursday’s community and protective services committee meeting, saying next month he’ll request committee members vote to ask staff to solicit information from other municipalities. He wants the issue brought up at the next  Urban Municipal Law Enforcement Network meeting.

In his motion, Chiarelli noted licensing has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada. The court dismissed an appeal of licensing rules applied to the area surrounding the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa campus.

Other municipalities, including Waterloo, Ont., require licensing of low-rise homes throughout the municipality. Critics there have called the system a cash grab, since landlords must pay to be licensed.

cmills@ottawacitizen.com

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KHULOOD AL-KATTA

Khulood Al-Katta’s world was once limited mostly to school and family.
But Al-Katta’s horizons expanded dramatically seven years ago after she joined the Pathways to Education program. Already a solid student, Al-Katta embraced the mentoring and career counselling that the program offered.
“With Pathways I always had somewhere to go for help and support,” she says. “I learned that accepting help opens all these doors for you.”
Al-Katta’s family had settled in Ottawa after emigrating from Yemen when she was four years old. She had learned English quickly, but her parents struggled with the new language and found it difficult to apply their skills in a new country.
They could offer little assistance to their daughter as she sought to negotiate Ottawa’s school system and plot a career path.
But support workers and mentors at Pathways stepped in to help. They told Al-Katta, then in Grade 11, about a paid co-op placement available at a local nursing home. At Starwood Nursing Home, Al-Katta discovered her passion.
“I met a lot of nurses and talked to them — and it really interested me,” she says. “They let me follow them and watch what they do.”
The co-op placement changed the direction of her life. Al-Katta, 21, is now in her third year of nursing at the University of Ottawa where she’s deeply involved as a volunteer and student advocate.
She’s a volunteer at Child and Youth Friendly Ottawa, a capacity-building organization for young people, and The Mental Health Project for Youth, a peer support group. She also works as a co-ordinator for Youth Futures, a program that helps low-income high school students reach college and university by providing leadership opportunities, campus tours and summer jobs.
“I was never really involved in the community before Pathways,” says Al-Katta. “Now it’s my life.”

ASSAN OMAR
Assan Omar was in his mother’s arms when they fled the violence in Iraqi Kurdistan in the mid-1990s.
Mother and son stayed in a refugee camp in Ankara, Turkey, then were sponsored by a church group from South Mountain, Ont., for immigration to Canada in October 2000. They lived in Cornwall and Winchester before settling in a public housing community in Ottawa’s west end.
Omar’s mother found out about the Pathways program through the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre.
“All I knew is that my mom wanted me to do this and I had to do it,” remembers Omar, now 20. “My mom was very strong and I looked up to her. She went though so much sacrifice that I couldn’t disappoint her.”
Despite his best intentions, though, Omar found high school to be intensely stressful. He struggled.
“I couldn’t tell my mom about my school grades. I got emotional about it, very depressed,” he says. “Every time I got a bad mark, I’d get mad at myself. I didn’t know how to succeed.”
Omar was directed into applied courses which, unbeknownst to him, would limit his ability to get into university.
At Pathways, he shared his predicament with his support worker, who intervened with teachers to understand how Omar could improve his marks.
“They helped me communicate with my teachers and get help in school,” he says. “As a student, you don’t want to tell people that you need help. But you really do need help.”
Omar took full advantage of all the support that Pathways offered. “I was coming into Pathways so many times it was ridiculous,” he says. “But it gave me confidence.”
Omar is now studying policing at Algonquin College and intends to transfer next year to Carleton University. He has his sights set on law school.
“My mother is only here so that I can be successful and go to university: she let me know that a long time ago … It pushes you to be successful when you go through so much struggle.”

HUSSEIN SAMHAT

Hussein Samhat found a supportive family at Pathways to Education.
Born in Windsor, Ont. while his parents were temporarily living in southern Ontario, Samhat came to Ottawa on his own as a 16-year-old since he was the only one in his family with a Canadian passport. He wanted to work in construction and send some money back to his family in Kuwait.
Instead, as a legal minor, he was sent to school. He spoke only a few words of English and, after a few months of living with relatives, he went to stay at a youth shelter.
Samhat, eager to avoid the shelter, came to the Pathways’ tutoring program four days a week.
“They were very patient: they listened to me. They were like my mother, father, sisters,” he says.
Pathways staff helped Samhat decipher his English homework and find a part-time job at a restaurant.
“My life was school, Pathways, work,” he says. In his spare time, he’d lift weights and read books.
In his second semester at school, Samhat began to earn good marks for the first time in his life. “Before, I felt I was forced to study, but now I wanted to,” he remembers.
Pathways helped Samhat find an apartment, improve his résumé, secure a better job in retail, and line up university scholarships.
Now 20, Samhat is completing the first year of a kinesiology degree at the University of Ottawa. He is qualified as a personal trainer and operates his own business, HSL Personal Training. He wants to study physiotherapy and intends to make a career as a strength and conditioning coach.
“It’s amazing,” he says. “I didn’t even think I was going to finish high school.”

Ottawa Fury FC’s women did not make coach Dom Oliveri a happy man Saturday at Carleton University, even if they were too good for K-W United in a 2-0 win, their second in two W-League games.

Oliveri, who had not been happy after game one, says it is time for his squad to smarten up, play up to their potential. “They were terrible,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I must apologize to the fans who paid good money to watch them.”

Fury FC have attacking midfielder Arin Gilliland to thank for any spark the team generated. After 23 minutes she picked up the ball just inside the K-W half, slipped between two defenders, outpaced a third and drove her shot across the goalkeeper into the far corner of the net.

She almost made it two in the 64th minute but her shot hit the post with goalkeeper Alison Gondosch beaten. Suddenly Fury FC found a little form. In the next 10 minutes a Gilliland header slipped past a post, and striker Kristy Moore brought a fine save from Gondosch who did it twice more from a Gilliland shot and a Lydia Hastings effort.

Hastings missed a second simple chance before Fury FC made it 2-0 with five minutes to go. Moore picked up a Gilliland pass, burst into the penalty box and fired a shot that Gondosch could only parry. This time, when the ball dropped to Hastings she banged it home.

The visitors were awarded a questionable penalty – one of several debatable referee decisions – in the final minute but Fury FC goalkeeper Jillian McVicker dove to her left to push the resultant shot away. Moments later came the final whistle.

The Fury women now head out of town for six road games and will not be back until their first games of the season at Algonquin College on June 28.

If Ontario has thousands and thousands of good jobs in the trades, waiting for Tim Hudak to clear away the obstacles facing eager young workers who want to be plumbers and steamfitters and auto technicians, nobody seems to know about them.

This is a major item in the Progressive Conservatives’ election platform: They’ll abolish the College of Trades, the fledgling regulator in Ontario, and change the rules so one experienced tradesperson can train one apprentice.

The party’s platform promises 21,280 new apprenticeship jobs every year for eight years, working out to 170,240 additional working tradespeople when they’re done. They often round up to 200,000.

That’s beyond the 32,448 people who registered for apprenticeship training last year. So we’re talking nearly 54,000 new apprentices, starting in the first year of a Hudak premiership, once he does away with the “job-blocking bureaucrats.”

This is a gigantic number. It’s hard to tease out the exact number of working tradespeople in Ontario from Statistics Canada, but figures from 2011 found 271,780 people holding apprenticeship or trades certifications working in jobs requiring them. If we go for a more expansive definition, counting Ontarians who have apprenticeship or trades certifications no matter what they’re doing with them, it’s 771,140.

I started asking the Progressive Conservatives last Wednesday what calculations underlie their promise; they haven’t been able to produce them.

The Tories’ line is that the College of Trades is a way of restricting trades jobs, a sop to the Liberals’ union friends. Fewer trained tradespeople means higher pay for those lucky enough to get into the industry. Remove it and you eliminate a layer of bureaucracy and help young people get good jobs building and making things we need.

If all those jobs are really there.

According to Statistics Canada, the vacancy rate for jobs in trades-heavy industries is lower in Ontario than the national average. It’s around one per cent.

Which is what you’d expect in an economy struggling to deal with losing its manufacturing mojo, isn’t it? There are shortages of some tradespeople in Canada, sure, but not particularly in Ontario.

Besides that, opening new apprenticeships isn’t as simple as standing aside and letting employers hoover up eager recruits. Schools such as Algonquin College have to be ready to do their part. Trades apprenticeships aren’t just entry-level positions for trade-school graduates: they include both work and school components at the same time. The two go together.

Algonquin will do whatever it can to meet demand but it isn’t lamenting a lot of empty classrooms and shops, says Chris Hahn, Algonquin’s chair of building trades and the head of all its apprenticeship programs.

“We’re full. We are full. In all sincerity, we’re full,” Hahn says. “I have a welding shop running at night, on the weekend. We’re full.”

Hahn was indirectly involved in setting up the provincial College of Trades, supplying research on how different regulatory colleges govern themselves. In an interview, he was agonizingly neutral about the College of Trades’s usefulness. But he said Algonquin has had about 2,500 people enrolled in its trades programs since before the College of Trades started and the numbers haven’t changed much.

“I would say they’ve remained relatively stable, with slight inclines,” he said. “We’ve probably trained the same number of plumbers for 10 years, the same number of carpenters. Electricians seem to go up and down a bit.”

If we want more trades apprentices, we’ll have to build more places for them to learn. Algonquin’s Centre for Construction Excellence was funded in 2008 but took three years to open. It’s not ready to take on 500 new students, or whatever it would have to add next year to meet the Tory target.

It’s true that unions aren’t crazy about letting a lot of new people into a job market that’s not full of jobs if it makes it easier for less experienced people to take work from more experienced ones because they work cheaper. “That’s a net negative on the jobs front,” says economist Jim Stanford, who works for the giant union Unifor.

Although, if you’re an employer, you might hire more people and do more things if labour is cheaper. And doing away with the college presumably means returning to older licensing fees for some trades, which were lower.

Those could be good things, but they aren’t the hundreds of thousands of jobs the Tories promise.

dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
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Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

With James Hunter

Algonquin Commons Theatre

Tuesday night

The Sharon Jones story is one of incredible soul. Not just the music that is in her musical heart, but the kind of soul that uplifts and overcomes.

And Jones has indeed overcome, beating back a pernicious bile-duct cancer that many don’t survive. But Sharon Jones, that hoppin’ and boppin’ fierce dynamo, did. She danced that cancer right out of her place.

So it was a true treat to see her at full throttle Tuesday night, backed by her well-dressed Dap-Kings band and supported by two strong back-up singers.

This concert was all the slick presentation and stellar showmanship of a soul revue that rolls through the tunes like a Mississippi River boat, running through funk, soul and even a dramatic and energetic version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine, the old Marvin Gaye hit. Along the way Jones took time to chide the audience in the densely packed mosh pit for not dancing when she asked. And then she showed them how, stepping through dozens of moves with hints of 1960s dances such as The Swim.

Before a full house gathered in the still relatively new Algonquin Commons Theatre, Jones bopped onto the stage, wearing a shimmering metallic patterned dress and sporting a new head of hair. She even confronted her battle against cancer in a dynamic rendition of the song Get Up and Get Out, during which Jones channelled her inner Tina Turner.

The evening closed for all intents and purposes with a stirring rendition of 100 Days, 100 Nights, one of Jones’ standards.

There is something sublime about a show that is seamless through an intense 90 minutes or so. Tuesday night, Sharon Jones was true to the promise in the title of her new and very funky fifth studio album called Give the People What They Want. She did that and more.

The night opened on a strong note with the very talented British soul man James Hunter, who has performed in Ottawa before, most recently at the 2012 Jazz Festival.

His show would have been worth the price of admission alone, frankly, so having him paired with Jones and the Dap-Kings made the entire evening funk-ing fantastic. Sitting alone on a stool wielding an electric guitar and amplified — he normally travels with an excellent band — Hunter reeled off standards and his own music. Normally he would have warranted his own review, but not this night.

Drawn to Villa Marconi Thursday morning on the promise that Ottawa West-Nepean Liberal Bob Chiarelli would be making a local-riding announcement, I was expecting something about long-term care homes, maybe, or something cultural.

Instead, it was a set of endorsements, which Chiarelli presented to about 15 people who also support him but who aren’t individually famous enough to be recorded as officially endorsing him. The room included people like former Ottawa Centre candidate Richard Mahoney, former Ottawa West-Nepean MP Marlene Catterall, federal candidate there Anita Vandenbeld, those sorts of folks.

The endorsers, each of whom said a few words about what a splendid fellow Bob Chiarelli is, were:

Sherry Franklin, the widow of Ben Franklin and a significant community activist in her own right
Mary Pitt, the former Nepean mayor
Mark Taylor, the current councillor for Bay ward
Nazira Tareen, the founder of the Ottawa Muslim Women’s Organization
Bob Gillett, the former president of Algonquin College

Also Roger Farley, the president of the Centre Multiservices Francophone de l’Ouest d’Ottawa, though he couldn’t be there, apparently.

The Gillett endorsement is more interesting than the rest, since they’re mainly from reliable Liberal warhorses. Gillett said he’s never endorsed a candidate before, though he’s freer to do so since he retired from leading a public institution. He praised Chiarelli particularly for getting Algonquin its new trades-training facility, a task he undertook first as a paid lobbyist during the years between his losing his last election for mayor and winning his Ottawa West-Nepean seat.

According to the Ontario lobbyist registry, Algonquin was one of just three clients he had in that period (the other two were St. Patrick’s Home and something called Recycling International Petroleum Products). Then, in government, Chiarelli got to enjoy the opening of the facility, though the decision to fund it was made before he was back in office.

Chiarelli understands the importance of the trades and education and preparing young people for the economy of the future, Gillett said, and he’s pleased to endorse Chiarelli personally.

Meanwhile, the Franklin household must be a fun place. Sherry Franklin is, as you know, married to former regional chair Andy Haydon, and:

Great surprise at the office today! Former regional chair Andy Haydon popped in for a lawn sign. http://t.co/xNO8vbLAG3—
Lisa MacLeod (@MacLeodLisa) June 04, 2014

The Blitz Build home — a bright and airy single-family home built in just three days by a small army of volunteers as a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity National Capital Region — greets prospective buyers at its first open house Saturday.

Located in the fast-growing Barrhaven community of Havencrest, the three-bedroom, Craftsman-style home was built in a marathon session in early April as a joint project between the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association (GOHBA), Habitat for Humanity and Algonquin College.

Hundreds of Ottawa-area contractors and suppliers provided labour and building materials gratis or at cost, Algonquin students swung hammers and served up tasty meals to hungry crews, and volunteers from GOHBA and Habitat scurried around the site over the three days to keep everyone on track and motivated.

The Barrhaven home was built in three days by a small army of volunteers.

The completed brick-and-siding house is Tartan Homes’ popular Lindsay model. It was built on an oversized lot provided by Tartan at a radically reduced price. The home is listed at $444,900, and the difference between selling price and construction costs – roughly $150,000 thanks to that Herculean volunteer effort – goes to Habitat (the original hoped-for profit was $250,000, but costs inched up over the course of the project).

“I’m already getting phone calls from people who have been driving by or heard about it on social media,” says sales representative Monica Hollands of RE/MAX Affiliates Realty. She’s providing her services free.

The open-concept, Energy Star-qualified home has all the bells and whistles. The main level features wide-plank engineered hardwood and ceramic tile flooring. A light-filled kitchen has a wraparound quartz-topped island/eating bar, two-toned Shaker cabinetry and stainless-steel appliances.

A gracious ensuite includes his-and-hers vanity, a Roman tub, and separate glass shower.

There’s a gorgeous custom stone fireplace mantel in the family room and the dining room off the central hall sports a floor-to-ceiling glass wine centre with temperature control. The top floor includes a laundry room with appliances and a gracious ensuite with his-and-hers vanity, Roman tub, and separate glass shower.

A custom stone fireplace mantel anchors the family room.

Not that getting to this stage was a cakewalk. The foundation had been poured before the build started, but that was the extent of construction when the first volunteers showed up in the pre-dawn chill of day one. The crews worked around the clock despite bitter winds and rain on the first day, crazy deadlines throughout, and a building site more crowded than the Tokyo subway system at rush hour.

The panic button was pressed a couple of times when tradespeople failed to show up. Still, the common goal of benefitting Habitat and those it helps kept volunteers focused, and the project was more than 98 per cent complete by sunup on Monday, 72 hours after it started.

“It would have made a great reality TV show, with heroes and villains,” says John Herbert, GOHBA’s executive director and one of three project leads who logged long hours during the build.

He’s seen some of the contractors since the build. “They remain keenly interested. They say, ‘When are you doing the next one?’ ”

If you go

What: Open house for the Habitat for Humanity Blitz Build

When: Saturday, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: 1141 Cobble Hill Dr., Nepean

Information/private viewings: Monica Hollands, RE/MAX Affiliates Realty, 613 864-7975, 613-457-5000

It’s out with the old journalism and in with the new digital version at the University of Ottawa.

University officials announced Tuesday that the institution is starting a bilingual digital journalism program that, they say, will be unique in Canada. It will be offered jointly with Algonquin College and La Cité collégiale. Registration will begin in the fall of 2015.

“In light of the worldwide proliferation of smartphones and the use of social media by journalists, digital journalism is clearly a relevant topic,” professors Evan Potter and Marc-François Bernier, co-ordinators of the journalism program in the University of Ottawa Department of Communication, said in announcing the new program.

The digital program replaces the university’s previous journalism program to which admission was suspended last year following a damning report that found it to be “profoundly troubled.” That four-year, 120-credit program operated in conjunction with Algonquin College and La Cité collégiale, with students taking two years at the college level and two at the university to receive a Bachelor of Journalism degree. The arrangement will continue under U of O’s new digitally oriented program.

The new program is in large part a response to a May 2012 report to the university’s senate that summarized an external evaluation of the old program as “scathing,” highlighting what was described as problems of communications among the three institutions. The report recommended the university’s program be suspended as soon as possible, and that the university either shut it down completely or overhaul it.

The university went the overhaul route.

“We’ve put in the necessary effort to remake our journalism program, not only to make it attractive for students, but so that it can also meet the labour market requirements of both anglophone and francophone media,” Potter and Bernier said. Students, they said, “will learn the new skills necessary to do journalism, where digital platforms are becoming increasingly important.”

Data journalism, geolocation, and handling quantitative data will be among the skill sets students will acquire, Potter said in an interview.

“We are going to be orienting the students to the evolving sphere of digital platforms. The traditional skill set of writing, accuracy, ethical reporting, that’s still part of the program, but we are creating an emphasis on digital.”

Potter also expects the communications problems that beset the previous program can be overcome with the hiring of a new co-ordinator to replace the full-time faculty members who’ve assumed of overseeing the program as part of their duties. “Students will have somebody there focusing exclusively on managing journalism at U of O.”

According to the university’s announcement, this person will be “an experienced journalist, who will be responsible in part for strengthening ties between the University of Ottawa and the two colleges.”

Under the program, digital journalism will be examined from different perspectives, including platforms — tablets, smartphones and computers — and the use of software to get the most out of government and institutional databases, and the diverse activities of production teams, such as computer graphics and coding.

The program includes a mandatory field internship, where participants will learn about an area such as community media and students, and gain practical digital journalism experience.

“We’re not ignoring print,” said Potter. “But we view print evolving to the digital … (and) we want to be part of this cultural change.”

Licensing private housing near Algonquin College and other ideas to crack down on illegal rooming houses will be studied by city staff at the request of the area’s councillor.

The city’s community and protective services committee approved College ward Coun. Rick Chiarelli’s request on Thursday to look for solutions for the area surrounding Algonquin. Illegal rooming houses, single-family homes renovated to have more than the three or four rental rooms allowed, started cropping up in the mid-2000s as the college expanded, Chiarelli said.

The character of the neighbourhood is hurt by absentee landlords breaking rules, he said, which adds to noise, parking and garbage problems. “Nobody has the right to run an illegal rooming house,” Chiarelli said. “This should give us a better opportunity to catch people.”

City staff will discuss combating illegal rooming houses in student neighbourhoods at the Urban Municipal Law Enforcement Network’s next meeting, to hear how other cities deal with similar problems and what regulation options there are.

Licensing has worked well in other municipalities, Chiarelli said, and his residents are keen for such a system that requires homes to be inspected and landlords to have maintenance plans. Annual inspections would allow city workers to access rentals and check the number of rooms.

Bylaw chief Linda Anderson told the committee that officers now need an invitation or warrant to enter a property. Only the fire department has a right of entry, said Susan Jones, general manager of emergency and protective services.

Resident John Batchelor told the committee that city staff need more teeth to go after landlords, to prevent people even considering breaking the rules. “It isn’t a big problem yet but … we’re at a tipping point,” Batchelor said.

Licensing has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, Chiarelli noted. The court dismissed an appeal of licensing rules applied to the area surrounding the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa. Other municipalities, including Waterloo, Ont., require licensing of low-rise homes throughout the municipality. Critics there have called the system a cash grab, since landlords must pay to be licensed.

Eastern Ontario Landlord Organization chair John Dickie told the committee the problems Chiarelli is talking about aren’t a reason to put a licensing system in place.

“We are utterly opposed to any formal landlord licensing,” Dickie said, adding several years ago council decided not to require landlord licensing across the city.

An example Chiarelli mentioned was a rental advertised on Kijiji that has 10 bedrooms.

The city should increase enforcement and its ability to gather evidence to deal with individual cases, rather than imposing a system on all landlords, Dickie said. “What licensing does, is it imposes all these requirements on people who are legitimate operators,” he said.

cmills@ottawacitizen.com

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Ottawa Fury women continued their march to the W-League central conference title Wednesday night, striding away from Quebec Dynamo in a 3-1 win on goals from captain Lisa-Marie Woods, Kayla Adamek and Christabel Oduro.

The victory, following a 2-0 win over nearest rivals Laval 24 hours earlier, increased the Fury’s league lead to eight points and helped them closer to clinching first place and home field advantage in the playoff finals.

Coach Dom Oliveri was pleased with a dominant first half and happy with a second half in which fatigue began to show on a team that has been on the road for six straight games, winning five and tying one.

The Fury return to Algonquin College on Saturday afternoon to play bottom-of-the-league London, play July 5 and 6 at home and conclude their schedule July 12.

“It’ll be nice to play at home again, and I’m pretty happy with how the long stretch of games away from home went,” said Oliveri of his squad of local, national and inernational players.”

The Fury Men announced Thursday afternoon that Toronto FC defender Ryan Richter has been loaned to Ottawa.

“We are always looking to get stronger as a Club,” said Fury FC Head Coach Marc Dos Santos in a media release. “We believe we need more options and depth in our backline.”

 “Ryan will give us a different dynamic in the back and we are looking forward to play a role in his development as a player.”

Richter, 25, is a 6-2 defender. He signed with TFC on March 25, 2013 and has made 15 appearances. Richter spent 2012 playing in USL PRO with the Charleston Battery alongside Fury FC midfielders Nicki Paterson and Tony Donatelli.

Toronto FC said this was an opportunity to give Richter playing time.

Re: Carved in stone, July 1.

I was so pleased to read Elizabeth Payne’s Observer article on the reconstruction project at the Parliament Buildings and especially so to see credit given Bob Watt, whom I knew as a passionate tradesman while I worked at Algonquin College. People like him deserve much more credit for the importance of the trades and trades education as an alternative to more “academic” pursuits.

The reason why the trades are underplayed in our school systems is the fact that every teacher who teaches seldom comes into contact with the trades. They are all university focused until they learn better. Bob is an example of many other craftsmen and women who exist in Ontario’s fine community colleges.

Bill Conrod, retired vice president, Algonquin College

Share your views on this and other topics to the editor by writing to letters@ottawacitizen.com

The Ottawa Fury Women hammered the Toronto Lynx Saturday afternoon 8-0, knocking the team from Hogtown out of the playoffs on the way to their most lopsided win of the soccer season.

The Lynx were the only team to take a point of Ottawa this regular season having tied a match 1-1 earlier in the campaign.

The Toronto side began the game well but when Christabel Oduro scored for Ottawa, the rout was on. She scored again to make the tally 3-0 and by the 33rd minute of the game Ottawa was up 4-0. The other scorers were Teresa Rynier and Lauren Hughes.

Just before the half Courtney Raetzman sped past three defenders before sliding the ball past the Lynx keeper. The goal was the 600th in club history.

In the second half, Raetzman picked up her second of the match in the 52nd minute on a cross from Oduro cross. She completed the hat trick in the 62nd minute.

Lauren Hughes finished the scoring in the 64th minute to make it 8-0 Fury.

“It’s obviously a good win for us, but I felt there were things that still need to be improved.  It’s about improving, it’s about building and this is a huge win for us in that respect,” said Ottawa head coach  Dom Oliveri after the game.  “We want this to be a message to everyone else in our conference that this is a difficult place to play, and I think we established that today.”

Ottawa now has eight days off before they host the Central Conference Final July 19 at the Algonquin College Soccer Complex at 3 p.m. Their opponent will either be K-W United or the Laval Comets.

The Ottawa Fury Women have claimed the W-League’s Central Conference championship after beating the Kitchener-Waterloo United 4-0 Saturday at the Algonquin College soccer complex.

Dom Oliveri’s squad remains unbeaten on the season with the victory and will head to Florida next week to take part in the league championship.

The afternoon started slowly with an early injury to starting Fury FC rightback Danielle Hubka.

As the first half wore on, though, the Fury Women started to dominate. Ottawa scored in the 37th minute, when Teresa Rynier tapped home a loose ball.

Ottawa suffered a second key injury when keeper Jill McVicker collided a United forward and injured her leg.  She was unable to continue, and backup goalkeeper Maryse Bard-Martel came on.

Related

• Fury men ready to make history at TD Place

The slim 1-0 Ottawa lead held until the half. But four minutes into the second half, Ottawa broke through. Shelina Zadorsky put a free kick off the visitors’ crossbar and the rebound fell to Annie Steinlage. Her shot crossed the goal line for a 2-0 lead.

Ottawa scored again in the 68th minute, when Christabel Oduro passed to Teresa Rynier who scored her second of the game.

Kristy Moore wrapped up the scoring.

Fury head coach Dom Oliveri was thankful for the victory.  “We’ve built something special here this year,” said the fourth-year Ottawa head coach, “We didn’t make it easy on ourselves today, and K-W United came in here and worked hard.  They’re well-coached, but when we started really playing our game in the second half, we pulled away as we should have.

“It’s always nice to win something, but now the work gets harder.  We’re going to face some really strong teams down there, and it’s time for our team to kick it into high gear.”

Now the Fury will take on the other conference winners, all aiming at the W-League championship on July 27 in Bradenton, Florida.

Cheryl Jensen was announced Thursday as Algonquin College’s eighth president. Jensen comes to the college — which has campuses in Ottawa, Perth and Pembroke — after working for 31 years at Hamilton’s Mohawk College, where she was as a professor, dean and vice-president. The Citizen spoke to Jensen, who starts on Aug. 25, about her new role.

How has your background at Mohawk College prepared you for this new role?

“I’ve had several positions at Mohawk College. The board was looking for someone for deep experience in teaching and learning,” said Jensen, pointing to her 16 years teaching in the Chemical Engineering Technology program. She also served as chair of Computer and Electrical Engineering Technology and as dean in the Faculty of Engineering Technology before becoming the Hamilton college’s vice-president.

In your acceptance speech, you noted the important of access to and diversity in education. How do you plan to promote that in Ottawa?

“By listening. I need to understand the needs of this community,” Jensen said, adding there are pockets of young people who don’t see post-secondary education as an option for them.

“I have deep experience in outreach to those communities,” said Jensen, citing a Hamilton project that focused on targeted neighbourhoods. She said she hopes to have the same impact in Ottawa.

“I want to help them to see they do have a future in the college system.”

The college has faced some criticism for having foreign programs that sometimes bar women, such as the men-only English language campus in Saudi Arabia. What do you think of these programs?

“In my experience at Mohawk we also considered opening a college in Saudi Arabia where there are separate classes for men and women. The way that we can provide equal opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia is to provide them North American options.

“Is it the same kind of culture that we have? No. We can help other countries to take on the western education.” She said that can be both by making education available in Canada and abroad, with the hope that those classes will eventually include women as well.

“There is great opportunity to integrate our type of learning.”

What are your priorities for Algonquin College?

“One of the areas that can’t put off is certainly in our digital technology and digital education strategy. It’s changing so quickly in the province, and internationally. We need to be at the forefront of that.”

What does this new position mean for you?

“I have a passion for education and really believe it’s the great leveller,” she said adding that the role of president gives her the opportunity to both shape the future of the school and influence the entire sector.

“More importantly, Algonquin College is a leader in so many fields. In my opinion it’s the best college in Canada and has always had an innovative view. It’s going to be so important to change as our learners change.

“I have a very, very strong passion for students and making sure they have my utmost attention.”

Cheryl Jensen has been named Algonquin College’s eighth president.

“As a teacher and leader, academic and administrator I’ve long admired Algonquin College,” Jensen said at the announcement Thursday morning, adding the college is a pioneer in applied knowledge. “It has truly become a standard for Canadian colleges.”

Jensen comes to the Ottawa college after working for 31 years at Hamilton’s Mohawk College, where she was as a professor, dean and vice-president.

Jensen was the Hamilton institution’s first female dean in the Faculty of Engineering Technology and Skilled Trades and taught in the Chemical Engineering Technology program for 16 years.

Jensen was selected after a four-month international search by the school’s board of governors.

“We were looking for a proven leader with the ability to inspire,” said Mark Sutcliffe, who sits on the board of governors, at Thursday’s announcement. “Someone who personified Algonquin values of caring, learning, integrity and respect.”

Jensen, who has a masters of education, in organizational and administrative studies, is the 2012 recipient of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges silver award for leadership excellence.

Outgoing president Kent MacDonald has held the position since 2012 but will be leaving Ottawa to serve as president of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, one of his alma maters. MacDonald’s last day is the end of this month and Jensen will start on Aug. 25. In addition to the Woodroffe campus where the announcement happened at 11 a.m. Thursday, Algonquin College also has campuses in Perth and Pembroke.

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The University of Ottawa and Carleton University have added details to plans to expand south and west in requests for tens of millions of dollars of provincial money. The Ontario government last spring asked universities and colleges to apply for major grants to add buildings for new and expanded programs, and to open whole new campuses in underserved areas. These are the preliminary responses; their specific proposals are due in the fall.

The U of O goes to Woodstock

The most ambitious plan from an Ottawa school is the one from the University of Ottawa to start offering classes in French in southwestern Ontario. The school has a preliminary agreement with the City of Woodstock and La Cité to work on a new campus in the municipality just east of London, an area it says has a francophone population in the tens of thousands but almost no options for post-secondary education in French. “If demand warrants, program offerings may be made available in the Greater Toronto [and] Hamilton Area,” the U of O’s submission says.

Plans for a new health building

Besides opening a new campus, the university wants to consolidate its health-sciences classrooms and labs in a new building in Ottawa, its submission says. It doesn’t put a dollar figure or a timeline on its plans.

La Cité eyes Toronto, too

The Ottawa-based francophone college wants to work with Sudbury’s Collège Boréal to open a French-language training centre for the skilled trades in Toronto. Beyond the general idea, details are scant so far.

Carleton looks to build at home …

Two new buildings, costing an estimated $35 million each, are on Carleton University’s wish list. One would help it expand its own health-sciences offerings with a program ultimately teaching 700 students in health-related fields who don’t specifically want to become doctors — studying things like environmental health and chronic illness. A second new building would hold more business students, both in existing programs and in expanded offerings in accounting and engineering management.

… and offer courses elsewhere

Carleton says it’s working on partnerships to give classes at the “excellent, but underused” Nav Canada training centre in Cornwall particularly aimed at Akwesasne residents. It wants to work with Toronto’s George Brown College on a program in “information modelling” and with Algonquin College on more shared programs. It’s also part of a group of universities and colleges interested in a project led by the City of Niagara Falls to open a “hub for education, and to create an entrepreneurial village with business incubators” there.

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As the beginning of another school year approaches, the perennial question arises as to whether students should hold part-time jobs while studying.

Opponents argue that working too often causes grades to suffer, while supporters note that time in the workforce brings skills that are useful in all facets of life.

We found three students — one in high school, one in university and a third making the transition from one to the other — and asked them about their experiences working while in school.

Caleigh Delle Palme

Twenty-three-year-old Orléans resident Caleigh Delle Palme has been working since she was 15, when she got her first job as a pharmacist’s assistant in a Superstore.

For the past three years she’s worked at two jobs: as a server at the Corner Bar & Grill on Bank Street, and, for 32 hours a week in the summer, as head of programming at the Petrie Island Nature and Interpretation Centre.

The latter fits in with her studies at Carleton University, where she’s in her fourth year of the school’s environmental sciences program.

“It’s an amazing summer job,” she says. “I get to be outside and I’m in my field, teaching kids, seniors and naturalist groups about the environment. And being on the job I get to learn more about the natural environment and get to know the plant species, a handy tool in my field. I learn a lot just by being there. I’m so grateful and lucky that I get to work in my field.

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“I found my passion there,” she adds. “I never thought I’d love teaching children as much as I do, and this job introduced me to it. I could make more money elsewhere, but I do this as my passion.”

Delle Palme’s parents picked up the tab for her first two years at university, and they’ve subsequently split the costs. Last school year, she lived in an apartment in the Glebe, which she paid for herself, largely from her earnings from the four shifts she worked each week at the Corner Bar. Along the way, she’s saved money, too, opening an investment account when she was 15 that has ballooned to a tidy nest egg.

“I think working as a student is a good thing, as long as you don’t overdo it,” she says. “I think it balances you. You know the value of earning your own money, but I don’t think your parents should make you do everything all on your own. A good balance is important.”

Louis-Philippe Ventrillon

Louis-Philippe Ventrillon attended De La Salle secondary school until Grade 11, then moved to Glebe Collegiate, where he just graduated from Grade 12. This fall he’ll study cognitive studies Carleton University.

Last April, the 18-year-old got his first job, at Morala Café in the Glebe neighbourhood where he lives with his parents, initially as a dishwasher but adding responsibilities to include making drinks and food, and serving customers. He works between seven and 10 hours a week and earns the student minimum wage of $10.30 an hour.

“It’s now a lot,” he admits, “but it’s enough to help me get by so I don’t have to be dependent on my parents for money anymore. I can pay for my own things.”

He mostly saves his earnings, he says, for the time he needs to buy something useful, but his job also allows him trips to bookstores or coffeeshops with friends, and to buy parts for his bicycle.

Additionally, he adds, it’s given him his first glimpse of the work ethic that he hopes will serve him well in the future.

“I’ve been gaining experience in the kitchen, learning how to work fast and do things properly, and do my best in whatever I do. And to do things on my own, like when I notice we’re running out of milk, I go get it. Make sure things are there when they’re needed.”

If his school schedule allows, he hopes to stay on at Morala in the fall, so that he can continue to pay his personal expenses.

“People should pay for their own university,” he says, “because it gives them a sense of financial responsibility, so they manage their money better.

“But then again it could be really hard on them, having to have a job while going to school; they might not do as well at school, or they might be tired at work.

“You just have to balance it properly, I guess.”

Daniel Kachuki

Daniel Kachuki recalls the first thing he bought with money he earned from his first job as a dishwasher at Lapointe’s restaurant in Kanata, where he started two years ago: a $300 PlayStation Vita portable game console.

“I got a job because I wanted some spending money,” the 16-year-old recalls. “I had some stuff I wanted to buy.”

Before too long, however, he grew tired of the toy, and had pangs of regret over buying it.

“I was young and wanted things I’d never had before. But I saw that I really hadn’t spent my money for good purposes.”

“Now I’m saving money, for my future. So far I’ve saved about $3,000.”

He expects that future, once he’s finished Grade 12 at De La Salle, to include 3-D animation courses at Algonquin College, where computer expenses won’t be inconsiderable. Additionally, he’d like to visit family members spread all over the world, from the Republic of Congo to the U.K.

A year ago, he moved to Lapointe’s Westboro location — much closer to his Caldwell/Carlington home — where he typically works 15 to 20 hours a week spread over four night shifts.

And far from adversely affecting his school studies, he says that his work experience has had the opposite effect, providing him the discipline he previously lacked.

“I’ve learned a lot since I started working here. I became more punctual, and not only at work. Work also teaches you a lot about responsibility. You mature a lot when you get a job, because you’re with other people and learning communication skills, because you’re working in a team. And I think I just took those skills I learned at work and applied them at school.

“People think working is a distraction from school, that you get less done, but once I started to work, I began to focus on things that are more important and get better grades.

“Working doesn’t necessarily affect your school,” he adds. “You decide whether it does or not.”

bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com